Strange goings-on in the Welsh countryside lie at the center of Booker Prize-nominee Alice Thomas Ellis's Fairy Tale, a ""supernatural comedy of manners"" first published in 1996 in the U.K. Young Eloise's rural ennui is broken by intrusions from the spirit world, including the appearance of four mysterious men in black, a changeling child and the ability to walk in a rainstorm without getting wet. Unbeknownst to her and her boyfriend, Simon, they are the intruders in a land ruled by the Kings of the Heights. A pleasantly diverting take on an old genre, this is perhaps too self-consciously quirky to grab a large U.S. audience.